Due to many complaints from users of LiveJournal the company announced it will again offer basic accounts. Unlike most other free blogging platforms, LJ's basic account has limited capabilities but the bonus of no advertising.
The option of signing up for a basic account was removed in March. Makes sense considering a free account with no advertising generates no money for LJ and in fact, probably costs the company money in storage space at the very least.
Apparently, LJ bloggers have grown accustomed to blogging without the distraction of ads. When the basic accounts were removed as a new user choice, many current users decided to hold a one day protest, refusing to blog or comment. In a news post LJ announced that basic accounts will return by the end of the summer for those in the Northern Hemisphere. The LJ team has also started a new blog specifically to discuss options and ideas for the future of basic accounts.
The LJ team admits it was probably a bad decision in the first place to remove the basic accounts but it looks like the developers plan to work with users on ideas to make things work to everyone's satisfaction.
We're big fans of FriendFeed, the social network aggregator that helps you keep track of your friends' activities across different platforms like Twitter, LastFM, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and about 1,000 36 others. If you're a fan or if you're just getting started, below are 10 tools to help you experience it just the way you like, after the jump.
Yahoo! has rejected the 10,247th buyout proposal to date from Microsoft. The New York Times reports that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and investor Carl Icahn made another offer to purchase Yahoo!'s search business on Friday night -- and gave the company 24 hours to respond. Because we've seen how well ultimatums work in the past. Unsurprisingly, The Yahoo! board rejected the offer.
Now are you ready for the funny part? In a detailed press release, Yahoo! explains that the board would prefer an outright sale of the company. The asking price? $33 per share -- or exactly what Microsoft offered several months ago. Yahoo! has seen its stock price fall significantly since that offer, and probably one of the only surefire ways to boost the stock price is to sign a deal with Microsoft or another company. But there's really no reason for Microsoft to pay $33 per share for a company that's stock price would only actually be worth that much money if and when Microsoft ponies up the cash.
Apple opened the iTunes App Store today, just ahead of the Friday release of the iPhone 3G. The phone is already out in some parts of the word -- lucky Aussies and New Zealanders! -- but while North America is waiting, there's the iPhone 2.0 firmware update and a new version of iTunes to play with. If you install these updates, you don't have to wait for a new iPhone before you start buying apps! iPod Touch users, however, will apparently have to wait until tomorrow for the firmware update, which will cost $9.95 -- compared to a free update for the iPhone.
What about the apps themselves? Well, for starters, there are over 500 of them, and 25% of those are free. So far, games are leading the pack, with Sega's much-hyped Super Monkey Ball as the most downloaded app. Other hot games in the Top 10 are Enigmo, Cro-Mag Rally and Bejeweled 2. Apart from games, the most popular download thus far is OmniFocus, the powerful productivity app from Omni Group, coming in at #4.
FreshAIRApps is, as its name would suggest, a directory of new Adobe AIR applications. As AIR has grown in popularity, we've started following the site more closely to see what's new in the AIR world. The only comparable site out there at the moment is Adobe's own AIR showcase. Because FreshAIRApps is such a great resource, it surprised us to hear reports that Adobe is upset with the site's owner over his use of the "Adobe® AIR™" trademark.
According to a message on the front page of FreshAIRApps, the site will continue as RefreshingApps.com, with the purpose of promoting the work of the developer community, not promoting Adobe. The site's owner says that the move caused him financial loss. No word from Adobe, although the message claims that the company's community evangelists think FreshAIRApps is good promotion for AIR.
As you might guess from the name of our blog, we download a LOT of software, and it's a little scary to contemplate how much bandwidth we collectively use every day. So, trying to imagine a time when we felt like a dial-up connection would suit our needs is pretty difficult. But that's exactly how 62% of U.S. dialup users feel, according to a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life project.
The economy isn't doing so hot these days, so you'd think that the additional cost of a high-speed connection would be the deciding factor for these folks, but it turns out that only a third of them cited cost as their reason for sticking with dial-up. 19% gave the mystifying answer that nothing -- not even a huge decrease in the cost -- would make them give up their dial-up. The study posited that they just don't spend enough time online to need it.
We recently reported on Netflix' decision to get rid of their profile feature, a decision that was not at all popular with customers. Here at Download Squad, we got several comments bemoaning the company's poor judgment and threatening to cancel their subscriptions to the service. Apparently, our readers were not alone. Thanks to pressure from calls, emails and petitions, Netflix has realize their error of their ways and agreed to keep profiles.
Today, Netflix users received this email:
"You spoke and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.
We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint you.
-Your friends at Netflix"
This is completely brilliant on the part of Netflix. They're going to get more goodwill from listening to users and keeping profiles than they ever lost by theatening to take them away. For users, nothing has changed, but the public perception of Netflix is bound to go up, now.
Have you ever heard a public figure make a claim that seems a bit preposterous? In the year of a U.S. presidential election, more people are going to be scrutinizing candidates -- and political bloggers -- and wondering if what they're saying is true, exaggerated, or just completely made up. That's where Ameritocracy comes in. You can add a quote, and Ameritocracy users will rate its accuracy and its relevance.
We think this is great fun, because it takes a step toward realizing our fantasy of siccing Slashdot commenters on all of our nation's politicians. Sure, the accuracy ratings might be questionable, but they should continue to improve as the site gains additional users. Ameritocracy is full of diverse issues and opinions, so if you can't get worked up over the election, maybe you have an opinion on propositions like, "The mobile phone may be the most potent tool ever invented for the elimination of poverty."
Wirewize is here to help you put together your home entertainment center setup and tell you just where to put all those a/v cables that may be confusing you. If you're not savvy with input/output and reading tiny instruction manuals in Chinese thinly disguised as English isn't your cup of tea, Wirewize could be what you need.
The concept is great - you tell Wirewize what components you have by providing the brand and model and after you input all your components, Wirewize shoots out a detailed step by step instruction list. The best part is the instructions are complete with detailed illustrations of the cables and inputs and they're in color. Wirewize is also nice to include pdf manuals of your system's components, a list of necessary cables and a way to purchase the cables if necessary.
Windows 7 cannot come fast enough! The New York Times is reporting that Intel has decided against upgrading its 80,000 employees to Windows Vista. An Intel spokesperson told the Times that Vista is being tested and deployed in certain departments, but not company-wide.
Although the enterprise push to upgrade to Vista has fallen short of expectations, this is a particularly brutal blow. Intel is one of Microsoft's oldest and most important partners; both companies became industry leaders in large part because of that partnership.
Although the Times' Intel source made efforts to say that the decision wasn't about "dissing Microsoft," we doubt that will make Steve Ballmer feel any better. Can you imagine what that conversation is going to sound like?
Despite the lack of widespread corporate adoption, the install base for Windows Vista is 140 million worldwide -- hardly peanuts. Still, with large corporations declining to upgrade their systems, Microsoft has had to extend support for Windows XP through 2014.
Facebook is at it again, rolling out features in advance of the redesign we've been hearing so much about. The latest addition is comments in the mini-feed. Now when you find out that "Ashley changed her profile picture" you can click a little + icon next to that item and add a comment. This doesn't go for all mini-feed items: it seems to be only for profile and status changes. At least you can't comment on a mini-feed item about someone's comment (yet.)
Well, ok. It's one more way of communicating on Facebook, but what does it imply about the future of the wall? What used to be the main point of communication is now one of many, with photo comments, mini-feed comments and messages all in the mix. Will more places to comment make things easier for users? On the plus side for Facebook, users will stay on the site a few seconds longer to check one more place for comments, but is it a plus for you? Weigh in with your comments about comments.
Fav.or.it is a new kind of RSS aggregator, somewhere in between a pre-set collection of feeds like Alltop and a full-on Google Reader-style service. It had been in closed beta, but now's it's opening to everyone. It includes a set of 2000 of the most popular and interesting feeds, and provides recommended stories based on what you're reading, how long you spend on it, and how you rate it. Basically, Fav.or.it tries to pay attention to what you're paying attention to. Also, as we reported earlier, your comments show up in Fav.or.it and on the original story.
It's no reason to abandon Google Reader, but if you're not already reading RSS feeds, this is a good introduction to managing them. With it's Top-Story-focused, categorized startpage, it reminds us more of Google News than Google Reader in some ways. Whether Fav.or.it gets a good user base is going to be depend on how happy people are with its recommendation algorithm. Even if you just think of it as site that exposes newbies to a couple thousand top blogs, it's doing a useful service for the Internet.
Anticipation is high for the upcoming launch of Firefox 3, with the recent Release Candidate 2 scoring good reviews from the likes of Walt Mossberg. We at Download Squad are constantly receiving tips that the finished product is coming soon. Well, here's the scoop: according to Firefox's development team, RC2 for Windows and Linux was good enough that it's getting copied straight over into RC3. For Mac, things are a little bit different. The OS X version is getting a few fixes and going through more testing, to work out some problems introduced by the 10.5.3 update.
If you've been watching the nightly builds like a hawk and sending in tips, your wait is nearly over. The Firefox Group says there are only 17 more issues on the list, and they should be dealt with by the end of the week. We don't have a hard and fast date for the release yet, but we believe the folks at Mozilla when they say it's coming soon.
You've been left behind (YBLB) is a new service to help you say "I told you so" to your friends and loved ones who don't make it with you during the Rapture. Rather than letting them figure out on their own that you've made it and they didn't, YBLB sends them an email from you so you can be sure to get the last word.
If nonnynonnybooboo isn't your style, your note could instead continue to harass encourage them to live their life the way you chose to live yours. You might also want to send them information as to the future hell they are about to endure and as YBLB so eloquently puts it, help "snatch them from the flames."
For just $40 for the first year, you get all this to help you stick it to your loved ones:
Store up to 250mb of documents
Send to up to 62 individual email addresses
150Mb encrypted document storage
100mb unencrypted document storage
You can edit documents any time
Write your own documents or choose from some of YBLB
Now, you might be wondering how YBLB will send the emails out since they're going to the Rapture party too. Well they came up with an ingenious solution - when 3 out of their 5 team members fail to log in over a 3 day period it will trigger the emails to be sent but, and here's the clever part, the system waits another 3 days to ensure no false triggers.
You've just got to hope the fab 5 of YBLB don't all get together and somehow aren't able to get online for 6 days pre-Rapture. That could be a very big oops.
Retaggr takes the concept of paper business cards and transforms them into Harry Potter like interactive cards. Beyond the benefits of not killing trees to leave your contact information, an interactive card is sooo multi dimensional. With your Retaggr card you can:
Show your recent Twitter messages
Link to your blogs, web profiles such as Facebook
Display your online activity on other sites like FriendFeed, Flickr, etc.
Add any web widget
Allow others to get in touch with you via Skype, MSN, Gtalk, etc.
Whereas paper cards are static, your profile card instantly updates as you update information on your various social networks. Also, when you leave comments on other Retaggr enabled sites, your profile card is left there too. If someone mentions you in a post, they can link to you so your card automagically appears.
A profile card provides more context to what you're about and what you're up to. And that is the other edge of the sword. (Cue scary music). How much information do you want people to have at their fingertips anyway?
Due to many complaints from users of LiveJournal the company announced it will again offer basic accounts. Unlike most other free blogging platforms, LJ's basic account has limited capabilities but the bonus of no advertising. 
FreshAIRApps
